Born on January 9, 1985, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, to Haitian parents, Mélissa Laveaux spent her childhood in Ottawa, Ontario. Her arrival on the scene in the mid-2000s brought an eclectic blend of folk-pop, rock, and blues threaded with references to her Haitian roots.
During 2006 she handled both recording and production duties on her first album, Camphor & Copper, a multilinguistic collection that placed her fluid guitar work and rich voice in the foreground. The release mixed original songs with renditions of Elliott Smith's "Needle in the Hay" and Eartha Kitt's "I Want to Be Evil."
After the album appeared she relocated to France, and in 2007 she received the musician bursary awarded by the Lagardère Talent foundation. The grant supported re-recording and mixing the debut, which No Format! issued in 2008. The following year she released a cover of Beyonce's "Crazy in Love," yet her second full-length project did not surface until 2013. Its title, Dying Is a Wild Night, alluded to an Emily Dickinson quote, and the record again drew on numerous styles, genres, and tropical cadences.
In 2016 she returned to Haiti, her parents' birthplace, for the first time in twenty years. Immersion in the country's history and culture generated the material for her third album. Released in 2018, Radyo Siwèl contained traditional folk songs, voodoo spirituals, and her original composition "Jolibwa."
